The initiative for our task force came from the faculty as an urgent response to the genocide taking place in Gaza and the attacks on students, faculty, and staff at UCLA—and throughout the UC system—for speaking out against the war. We demanded some kind of statement from UC leadership condemning Israel’s actions and U.S. support. Our colleagues were losing family members by the dozens; the entire educational infrastructure was being bombed into oblivion, and many of our colleagues (faculty, students, administrators) in Gaza were being killed or maimed in the process. Many of us signed a letter in October calling on UC leadership to “recognize the plight of the Palestinian people and the horrors that have been inflicted upon them for decades, [which] the UC system has totally neglected and is complicit in the ongoing occupation of Palestine.” By November, neither UC President Michael Drake, UC Regents Chair Richard Lieb, or our own Chancellor Gene Block had made a statement condemning the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, the mass killing of civilians—more than two-thirds of which were women and children—the litany of war crimes that left Palestinians with little food, access to clean water, shelter, the very basics life.

We met with Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost (EVCP) Darnell Hunt and other administrators with the goals of: informing campus leadership of the hostile climate faced by Palestinian, Arab and Muslim students as well as members of SJP, UC Divest Coalition, and allied organizations for merely protesting Israel’s assault on Gaza; urging Chancellor Block to publicly and unequivocally affirm the value of Palestinian life and to make a clear statement rejecting the conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism; and to back up any statement with action. Suggested actions included (but were not limited to) forming a Chancellor’s advisory committee on Arab, Muslim and Palestinian life; investigating and responding to anti-Palestinian harassment and violence on our campus; taking steps to ensure the physical safety of students, faculty and staff; offering resources, services, and accommodations to members of our community affected by the genocide in Palestine and mounting repression campaigns; requesting that EDI and the Center for Teaching coordinate with faculty to offer programming on teaching Palestine on campus; and protecting the academic freedom of faculty and students — particularly untenured colleagues who faced retaliation, harassment, and possible termination for the political positions they were taking.

UCLA EVCP created the Task Force on Anti-Palestinian, Anti-Arab and Anti-Muslim Racism in December 2023.